


A Disaster a Day Does Not Keep the SHIELD Agents Away (Or, Snippets from Night Vale)

by pathera



Series: Three SHIELD Agents, a Desert Town, and Thirty-Two Averted Apocalypses [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Because it's Night Vale, Clint loves it, Crack, Domestic, Fake Science, Fluff, Gen, Guest Stars, I abuse italics, I accidentally kept writing, Life in Night Vale, Lots of Hand-Waving, M/M, Natasha is ambivalent, Night Vale Needs Supervision, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Phil hates Night Vale, Run-On Sentences, Shenanigans in Night Vale, Snippets, Timeline What Timeline, What Have I Done, unless the Man in the Tan Jacket is around
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-20
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-20 04:47:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 9,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1497193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathera/pseuds/pathera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The continuing adventures of Phil, Clint, and Natasha in Night Vale. Wherein Phil still hates Night Vale, Clint still loves it, the Man in the Tan Jacket drives Natasha mad, no one likes Desert Bluffs, and the world almost ends every other day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It's the End of the World as We Know It

**Author's Note:**

> I may have accidentally kept writing the other day, and I now present to you snippets from Night Vale. I can't promise how many of these there will be, none of them will be very long (I hope, I swear if this grows a plot I'll just walk into the Dog Park and disappear), and they won't be in any particular order, so expect the timeline to jump around. Figure on spoilers for all episodes of Night Vale currently out, and if I reference things from new episodes I'll be sure to put a note at the beginning of that snippet. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

The world almost ends in Night Vale roughly once a week. Some weeks are worse; there is one in September where every single day goes lurching towards the metaphorical (and in one case, literal) cliff. Near annihilation occurs more often in Night Vale in three months than it does across the entire span of human history in other parts of the world. Night Vale is a nuclear bomb of weird sitting on a self-destruct button.

There are two major theories among the SHIELD scientists as to what Night Vale actually _is_. The first theory is that the town is centered over a rift in time and space—like the one in Cardiff that causes all kinds of trouble—and this is what happens when all that energy and weirdness goes unchecked. The second theory is that the entire Night Vale/Desert Bluffs area actually exists in a pocket universe and there is a hole in the fabric of reality that allows for passage between the worlds.

Phil tends to favor the pocket universe theory. Natasha leans towards the rift side, and Clint has a hundred conspiracy theories that would take far too long to list. The point being, Phil is not positive that a world-ending cataclysm in Night Vale will actually take the rest of the world with it. After all, Night Vale tends to be self-contained in its disasters, and if it spills over it only ever seems to go as far as Desert Bluffs or the edges of the desert.

(Desert Bluffs is its own clusterfuck. Phil doesn’t know if it has always been that way or if prolonged spillover from Night Vale twisted it or if the root of the problem is Strexcorp. He has only been to the town a handful of times, never got stuck on Desert Bluffs watch duty, because while Night Vale is an evil that is suffered by all higher clearance SHIELD agents, Desert Bluffs is reserved for the ones who get on Fury’s shit list. And if Phil has been on that list--probable--he has too much blackmail and is too good at his job to ever get shunted over to that hellish corner of the desert. All Phil really remembers about Desert Bluffs is a lot of blood in places where blood should not be, and an obsession with proficiency that disturbed even him. There is something chaotic and violently controlled under the surface of Desert Bluffs, repression gone all twisted. At least Night Vale is honest, chaotic and violent on the surface and never pretending to be anything but.)

All of this being said, Phil _does_ know that if the world ends in Night Vale and one happens to be _in_ Night Vale at the time, it won’t be pretty

The fifteenth almost-apocalypse _is_ pretty, though. It is beautiful, in fact. The sky is on fire, bright vivid red and flickering through with blue heat, with yellow licks of flame, the sun distinguishable only because its edges are circled in deep black-red. The heat isn’t unbearable yet, though it has been rising through the day. It feels now like standing too close to an inferno, comfortable warmth edging over towards painful. According to the radio, people have been baking like clay in a kiln, freezing into human statues that shatter as easily as dropped pottery. It is not even close to scientifically possible or logical, but Phil doesn’t question it.

He and Natasha and Clint are gathered on the roof of their trailer, Clint sprawled out on his back, Natasha with her legs swinging over the edge, one hand shading her eyes as she looks out across the desert rather than up at the flame-drenched sky. Clint has his eyes closed, stretches like a cat in the sun, not bothered by the fact that they might all be human-pottery in fifteen or so minutes. Phil himself leans back on his hands, tilting his face up to the sky. The radio murmurs below from inside the trailer, barely audible through the open windows.

“We should be doing something about this,” Phil says, because he is a SHIELD agent and he is _supposed_ to say things like that.

Clint waves a hand lazily, not bothering to open his eyes. “What’s the point? We’ll either make a nice statuette set for someone’s garden or someone will fix it.”

“He’s right,” Natasha says, glancing over her shoulder. She is smiling. She should not be smiling during an apocalypse; they are supposed to be composed in the face of certain death, not _smiling_ into it.

Phil sighs. “I know,” he says, and doesn’t move. Somewhere in the distance, a rocket shoots up into the sky and bursts into purple fireworks that make the sky hiss like hot metal thrust into water.

“Told you so,” Clint says, opening one eye and smirking at him.

Phil certainly does _not_ consider pushing him off the roof, no matter what Natasha’s look might suggest. Natasha grins wider at him, swings her legs in a steady drumbeat against the trailer’s side, while Clint closes his eyes and rolls onto his stomach, and Phil tilts his head further back to watch the sky’s flames subside into wispy curls of smoke gray, apocalypse fifteen averted, number sixteen lurking somewhere on the horizon. But maybe it will have the courtesy to wait until tomorrow.


	2. Steve Carlsburg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve Carlsburg. Uuugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is just a little bitty piece of nonsense about that Steve Carlsburg character. You will find no substance here folks!

Phil knows that Cecil on the radio hates Steve Carlsburg. He isn’t sure what to do with this information, but he knows it, it goes into the mental file of _Night Valeian Information_. He doesn’t know _why_ Cecil hates Steve Carlsburg, but he assumes that it is some old vendetta or simple clashing personalities.

Clint meets Steve Carlsburg though, once when he is out patrolling the city. He comes home with his hands curled into fists and says _Steve Carlsburg_ in almost the exact same tones as Cecil does and then when he tries to elaborate he ends up just sputtering, “He just—I—ugh, _Carlsburg_ ,” then throws his hands up in the air and refuses to say anything more.

Phil looks at him a little sideways, shakes his head, and lets it go.

Natasha comes home two weeks later though, her teeth gritted and her cheeks flushed, and she says _Steve fucking Carlsburg_ to Clint, who nods fervently. It is his _I know right?_ nod. Natasha is seething, twirling a knife angrily, but when Phil tries to ask all she can do is shake her head and say _Steve Carlsburg_ again, then throws Clint a _he just doesn’t understand_ look.

And Phil honestly doesn’t understand, until he meets Steve Carlsburg a week after that. Steve Carlsburg is…he is… _uugh_. _Steve_ _Carlsburg_.

(Later, much later when Night Vale has been shaken from their boots and the Avengers are in full swing, Carlsburg will be the codeword for when things have gone completely and irredeemably FUBAR, and the mention of the name will still make all three of them gnash their teeth.)


	3. In Charge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha is the mission leader. Phil is okay with this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another really short one. Updates are probably going to slow down after this, but I have a few more that are already done. Thanks to everyone who has left kudos and comments! Enjoy!

Technically, _technically_ , Natasha is the supervisor in charge during the length of this mission. There are five primary reasons for this:

a) though Phil was cleared by medical for active duty, it was still the strong opinion of medical that his active duty be of a rather _less_ active variety, because

b) while both Phil and Clint are officially out of their mandated recovery periods and theoretically of sound health and mind this does not _actually_ equate to full recovery

c) Clint Barton is a trustworthy, proficient, and professional agent that no one would _ever_ put in charge of a mission in Night Vale, knowing of the inevitable descent into chaos

d) Phil Coulson’s impartiality and composure is pushed to its limits by Night Vale

and, of course, e) Nick Fury likes to fuck with his people.

In practice, Natasha’s authority makes very little difference on how they normally function. It means she sorts out mission priorities, that she can deal out the shit jobs to Clint and Phil when they annoy her (which she doesn’t abuse too terribly, certainly less than when Clint is in charge), that she gets to fill out the piles of paperwork (Phil does take pity on her there, because he knows Natasha has infinite patience but too many hours of paperwork and even she is vulnerable to twitchiness and a twitchy Natasha means knives, so many knives). At the end of the day, though, the three of them are a long established team and they fall into their routines; they know how they function together, the ways that work and the ways that don’t, and they know that if everything goes to shit Phil will have the plan and Clint will have the high ground and Natasha will be exactly where she needs to be before the other two even know she needs to be there.

And in the meantime, Phil will gladly let Natasha take the reins, even when she makes him sort through seventy-two hours of audio from the numbers station. 


	4. Natasha and the Man in the Tan Jacket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Man in the Tan Jacket drives Natasha crazy. She may or may not be planning a murder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was only going to post one tonight but I changed my mind, here have two instead! Please, if you see any spelling or grammatical errors point them out, I'm half asleep and I didn't comb through this one as thoroughly as I probably should have. As a timeline note, I'll remind you that these are so not in order, but this one probably falls after Radio Waves, given Clint's touchiness.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Natasha’s eyes are crazed. “I can’t remember him,” she says. “He has a tan jacket. He has a suitcase full of flies. _Why can I not remember a man with a suitcase full of flies_ ,” she snarls. Clint takes a slow step back and to the right so that he can hide behind Phil, who gives him a flat _I know what you are doing_ look.  “I’ll remember him if I dissect him,” Natasha growls, ignoring them both and pacing.

“Mission protocol seventeen,” Phil says in a bored voice. “No killing, maiming, stabbing, cutting, shooting, torturing, or in general bringing harm to a Night Vale subject unless they are a direct threat to an agent or mission objective. Dissection, as I recall, requires a dead subject, and counts as torture if performed on a live one.” This is not the first time he has had to say this.

“I don’t know sir,” Clint says, as if he’s not still hiding behind him. “He’s a threat to her sanity and _our_ safety. Maybe you could make an argument for surgery rather than torture.” Phil gives him a stink eye over his shoulder.

“Protocol eighteen prohibits kidnapping and experimentation, as _you_ _well know_ , Barton. Do not encourage her. Besides, unnecessary surgery falls under the umbrella of general harm.”

Natasha examines him with narrowed eyes. “Perhaps he presents a threat, the next time we meet. He is clearly an unpredictable individual, an attack on my person in a plausible scenario.”

Phil’s look is flat and unimpressed. “Protocol sixteen, undue provocation. Why do you insist on making me repeat these when I know you know them.”

Natasha tosses her head. “Perhaps I just happen to find him dead.”

“In the unlikely event that you do _find_ him dead, feel free to dissect him to your heart’s content. _After_ you fill out the appropriate ten pages of paperwork, as is your duty as _mission_ _leader_. If, however, your ‘finding’ includes anything that breaks protocol seventeen I will make sure you spend the next six months in Desert Bluffs under the command of whatever upstart, blowhard puppy they shucked out there. And _yes_ , Natasha, I _will_ know.”

“You’re so hot like this,” Clint stage whispers in Phil’s ear, as Natasha sighs and says something in Russian under her breath. “That’s not nice,” Clint adds, draping himself languidly against Phil’s back, arms resting across Phil’s shoulders. “Mrs. Coulson bakes us cookies.”

Natasha rolls her eyes at him and turns on her heel. She’s planning something, Phil can tell by the set of her shoulders. He just hopes that it is not the murder he just told her not to do, he _really_ does not want to fill out that paperwork and he _knows_ he’ll be the one that ends up with it.


	5. Lazy Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a lazy day in Night Vale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all! Thanks so much for reading, commenting, bookmarking, and leaving kudos! 
> 
> This one is set (obviously) in Ep. 35 Lazy Day. 
> 
> I feel like the more I write the more out of character Phil gets, so apologies for that. 
> 
> Enjoy!

Phil Coulson should be concerned. He _should_ , he knows that. The air is too thick and too hot, he feels liquefied, like all the molecules in his body are lazily buzzing apart. He would probably just disintegrate, but that in itself is too much effort and so he stays a single solid entity. He is slumped in the armchair in their living room, too tired to straighten himself out even though this position pulls at the scars on his chest, makes them twinge. Across from him, Clint is sprawled ungainly on the couch, one hand thrown across his eyes. He never bothered to get dressed this morning and the white tank he slept in sticks to him, riding up slightly on his stomach.

It should be an interesting sight, but Phil is too tired to be interested.

The voice on the radio drones on, his voice as languid and heavy as the air, and Phil honestly doesn’t know what he is saying. He can’t focus long enough to listen.

He’s not sure where Natasha is. He’s not sure how she even managed to leave the trailer this morning.

He blinks, or he thinks he blinks. Maybe he actually closes his eyes for a significantly longer period of time, because when he opens them again the ceiling is much closer than it was before.

“Why am I floating,” Phil says slowly. It is not a question. He doesn’t have the energy for questions. It would be nice if the answers he desires were written on the ceiling tiles. It would be nicer still if gravity could just resume working without him having to put any effort into finding out why it stopped in the first place. Clint flops his arm away from his face and it dangles limply in the air.

“Huh,” the archer says, and then with what looks like a Herculean feat of effort he sends himself spinning. “Get me a ceiling fan and I’ll reenact that scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” he says, flipping idly through the air. He doesn’t sound like he would actually do it though, his words slow and drawn out. Phil can hear the faint edges of a Midwestern twang peeking through in his broad vowels.

Phil closes his eyes. “Wake me up when the laws of physics return to normal,” he says, and yawns. The words take so much _effort_. Taking a nap doesn’t, he’ll just do that instead, he can take a nap floating in midair, SHIELD agents are capable of anything.

There is a knock on the window. Phil and Clint have a silent conversation in raised eyebrows and glares until Clint finally huffs and swims through the air to look out. “It’s Nat,” he says, and painfully pries the window open.

“You’re both useless,” she says. There’s no bite to it, as she grabs Clint’s arm to leverage herself inside. She pants a little once she is in, and the three of them float in silence for a long moment. And then, it starts to get dark.

“Oh good,” Clint says, glancing out the window. “The sun is going out.”

Phil should really, _really_ care. He thinks about saying _I hate this town_ , then decides not to, making his mouth move would just take too much out of him and Clint and Natasha already know it. The world grows darker and darker until—

Until the light suddenly flares back. Gravity reengages and Phil thuds down into the armchair. There is more flailing from Clint and Natasha’s direction; they land on the couch, Clint sideways and hitting his head against the coffee table, Natasha landing across his stomach. Clint groans and Natasha makes a soft sound and Phil checks to make sure neither of them are bleeding before he snorts, the laughter bubbling up.

“Thanks for your concern, sir,” Clint says, as he and Natasha rearrange themselves and he rubs his head, wincing. He is laughing though, right along with Phil, and Natasha is shaking her head in amusement. Clint gives Phil a conspiratorial grin and then leans heavy against her, groaning aloud that his strength is gone, he just _can’t_ support his own weight anymore, and Natasha calls him an idiot but it sounds soft as it rolls off her tongue. She digs her elbow into his side, making him yelp, and they settle back against the cushions, shoulders brushing.

“I can’t believe I was floating and I didn’t reenact Mission Impossible. I have an entire list of things to do while floating and I didn’t do _any_ of them,” Clint whines. In his scuffling with Natasha his tank has twisted up again, showing the strip of skin just above the waistline of his sweatpants.

Phil finds it _very_ interesting now.

“Do I want to know why you have a list of things to do while floating?” he asks, very pointedly looking at Clint’s face and not lower.

Clint looks at him, his mouth curving up. “Are you trying to say you don’t?”

“It’s not something that crossed my mind.”

Clint leans forward. “Well let me enlighten you,” he says. “Now, number one involves my bow, an apple, and a volunteer….”  


	6. Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's no actual Night Vale in this one, unfortunately. I just wanted to give a little background on how these three ended up being shipped off to the desert. 
> 
> Thanks to everyone who is reading!

They have one mission together between when Phil returns from the dead and when they all get shipped off to Night Vale. It is barely a month after Phil wakes up, when he has been released from medical only because he threatened to escape (again, but that's another story) if they didn’t let him out. The Avengers are scattered to the four winds, New York is beginning to rebuild, the Helicarrier is barely back in the air, and SHIELD is a carefully organized clusterfuck with too few people and too much to do. Fury is off dealing with the Security Council who not-so-politely demanded his presence, Hill is in D.C. at the Triskelion trying to whip the organization back into shape, and in the confusion someone who hasn’t been paying attention to detail decides to send Strike Team Delta after some of the human element who helped Loki without coercion.

It is an unequivocal disaster.

Phil refuses to let anyone else handle his assets, not after everything, so he bullies medical into clearing him for duty by promising to be hands off, eyes and ears only. He even intends to follow through with that promise, until three hours into the mission Clint goes silent on the comms and disappears.

Phil does _not_ keep his promise.

The whole thing ends with a concussion and thirty-eight stitches for Clint, a reopened wound and fifteen new stitches for Phil, two explosions, one collapsed building, ten people dead, and Natasha making half of medical and two senior level agents cry. She also refuses to talk to Phil and Clint for two days unless she absolutely has to, and even then she speaks only in vicious, low Russian. The argument she has with Fury in the aftermath becomes infamous because she goes into his office, closes the door, and not a single sound is heard from within for half an hour. The argument she has with Hill becomes infamous because it ends with guns in both of their hands.

A week later, Fury calls the three of them in and says “Night Vale.”

Phil sighs, Natasha nods, and Clint almost smiles for the first time in weeks.


	7. Retirement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear these are getting fluffier and more out of character. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

“You ever think about what you’ll do when you retire, sir?” Clint asks, his voice a little breathless.

Phil sinks three bullets into the giant lizard that was sneaking up behind him and Clint’s arrow flies straight and true into the head of another.

“Choose your moments, Barton,” he replies, and Clint grins at him, his face flecked with dots of green blood.

“Giant lizards, Coulson, seemed as good a time as any.”

A clawed hand swings at his head and Phil ducks under it, taking aim at a lizard behind it. There is a dull thwack and the lizard in front of him goes down just like he knew it would, an arrow through one of its large eyes.

“What do you think about here?” Clint continues conversationally, steadily firing. “Get a real house on the edge of town, with a great view of the sunset. Nice quaint little town where it’s warm, good people, nice restaurants.”

“ _Giant lizards_ ,” Phil says.

“Never boring,” Clint shoots back.

Phil could rattle off a list of why Night Vale is the _last_ place he will be retiring, but he doesn’t. SHIELD agents don’t retire, they both know that. Phil is proof that even death doesn’t always get you out. But he thinks about it for a moment, as he twists around to shoot a lizard coming up behind Clint. A house and the sun-drenched desert and Clint is right, it _would_ never be boring.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, and Clint smiles brilliantly at him before shooting a lizard that explodes and covers them both in its sticky lime green innards.

Phil looks down at his suit and sighs. “I take that back,” he says.

“Nope,” Clint says. “No take backs, I’ll start looking at real estate.”            

“I should let the lizards eat you.”

Clint shoots an arrow over his shoulder. “You’d miss me, sir.”

“I would be less covered in green.”

“Yeah, but what fun would that be?”

“You and I have different ideas of fun, Clint.”

“No we don’t,” Clint says with another grin, circling to put his back against Phil’s. “Come on Phil, think about it, us as two grumpy old men sitting on our porch and watching the young whippersnappers fight off saber tooth tigers, taking bets on who loses an arm, calling out pointers.”

The last lizard goes down with a knife buried in its back and they both turn to look at Natasha. She is annoyingly clean of blood, not a speck of green on her. “If you boys are done planning your future, perhaps we should move inside before the next wave comes?” Clint sticks out his tongue at her and takes up the rearguard position as they follow her towards the nearest building. “Oh,” she says, throwing a glance back over her shoulder, “and I expect my own room in your picturesque little house.”

“Well duh,” Clint says.

Phil shakes his head and pretends that he isn’t mentally drawing out a floorplan. 


	8. Attached

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was terribly long between updates, I know, I suck. Sorry! I'll try to be quicker with the next couple. There probably aren't that many of these left, but you never know! 
> 
> This particular one is set right around Episode 44 (Cookies) as far as the Night Vale timeline goes. 
> 
> As always, thanks so much for reading, reviewing, liking, and/or bookmarking!

Clint never misses one of Cecil’s broadcasts if he can help it. He has an innate sense for when they will be on, which is quite a skill since the time always changes, sometimes by only a minute, sometimes by hours. Wherever they go, he makes sure there is a radio near so that he can tune in. He even has a tiny portable one, and there are at least three occasions on which they fend off an invasion of giant glowing acid-spitting bats to the smooth, dulcet tones of Cecil Palmer's voice resonating from Clint's pocket.

Phil would say that it is oddly soothing, sometimes, to hear Cecil calmly talking about baseball even while an angry neon green bat is trying to acid-spit its way through their makeshift trashcan barricade, but, he hasn't been hit in the head enough times to admit something like that yet.

Clint  _claims_ that his fascination with the radio is just a way of keeping tabs on potential threats, and to be fair he isn't wrong. The radio is one of the more reliable ways of monitoring movement through and around the town. But  _Clint_...well,  _he_ would say that he is enthusiastic, Natasha would say fanatical, and Phil would definitely use the word obsessed, because Clint is over-invested in the town's dramas, in the ongoing relationship between Cecil and the perfect-haired scientist Carlos, in Old Woman Josie and her angels, in the mayoral campaign, in the missing-but-still-semi-present-on-some-plane-of-existence Intern Dana.

If SHIELD didn't have protocols in place limiting agent involvement to observation only unless unavoidable--and it ends up being unavoidable far more often than Phil is comfortable with--Phil knows that Clint would disappear into the nethers of Night Vale and probably never resurface. He would join the committee for the Faceless Old Woman's campaign, he would adopt one of Khoshekh's kittens, he would either lead the Secret Police on a merry chase or end up joining them, he would help Tamika Flynn train her arm of children for battle, he would lead a guerrilla war against StrexCorp. 

To be honest, Phil is not positive that Clint  _isn't_ doing some of these things. At the very least, he is smuggling supplies out to Tamika Flynn and her army in the desert, and Phil has no doubt that Natasha is helping him. He's seen more explosions than normal coming from their corner of the desert, and he recognizes Romanov's deft hand in them.

And, well, if Phil himself happens to have laid the groundwork needed to hide several Girl Scouts should it become necessary he is fully prepared to write his reasons off as overexposure to the sun. 

This is what Night Vale does though. It inserts itself under you skins, batter constantly against your defenses until they start to crack, until you don't take a second glance at mysterious lights in the sky, until you find yourself smiling fondly when the voice on the radio recounts his most recent date with a scientist, until you blink and find yourself  _attached_. There is a reason why the SHIELD rotations for Night Vale are limited to three months.

Phil, Clint, and Natasha have been here for five, and it is starting to show. 

 


	9. Cecil Palmer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone, I'm so sorry about how long it took for an update! I think there are only about four or five chapters left, which I'm going to try and get up as soon as I can. I'm also going to try and actually reply to comments this time around (I know, I suck at actually doing that), because I really do appreciate all the comments and kudos I've gotten. I'm super far behind on episodes of Night Vale, so unfortunately there won't be very much of these three diving into whatever plotty things are going on, and if some details about Night Vale or any of its characters don't match up please let me know! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!

If there is one thing that they cannot agree on, it is what Cecil Palmer looks like.

They all know his voice, of course. They could recognize it from miles away, through layers of distortion. But _seeing_ him is another story entirely. For a start, it’s an elusive sighting. Cecil doesn’t hide by any means, but he isn’t necessarily the pupil of the public’s eye either, and it’s not uncommon for one of them to hear his voice and turn expectantly only to catch just a glimpse of him as he disappears around a corner or into a building or simply into thin air.

Clint is the first to meet him in person, when he finds him in the cereal aisle of the grocery store, debating under his breath between Imaginary Cornflakes and Pyramid Puffs, his voice just loud enough to be identifiable. Clint comes home from that grocery run without any of the groceries he was sent to get, carrying only an autographed box of Pyramid Puffs that he clutches to his chest. “He’s _awesome_ ,” Clint says, with all the bright fervor of a fan-boy who has met his idol. Cecil, according to him, is a fairly tall man with tan skin and white-blond hair, who wears glasses and has glowing purple tattoos that wind their way across his forearms.

This is all well and good, until two weeks later when Natasha comes into the trailer with a frown on her face and asks Clint to recount his description of the radio host. He does and Natasha gives a little shake of her head. Cecil, she says, is _definitely_ a tall, broad-shouldered Native American man, still with glasses, who has long, dark hair that he ties back in a ponytail and who does not have tattoos.

Clint stares at her. Phil stares at both of them, because he's sure he just saw Cecil kissing Carlos outside Big Rico’s and he is positive that the man he saw was a somewhat stocky African American man with short hair and no glasses and a glowing purple third eye on his forehead.

That weekend the three of them sit in the bleachers at the high school football game and consider the vaguely human-shaped figure with glowing purple tentacles and a large, toothy void-grin who is holding Carlos’s hand and beaming at him in between narrating the game.

“Huh,” Clint says.

Collectively, they agree not to question it any further.


	10. A Circus on Gamma Radiation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beware, this chapter includes some ridiculous run-on sentences. (I blame Clint.)

Clint Barton loves Night Vale. It’s weird as fuck and off the wall and it’s just like being back in the circus. Well, maybe a circus on gamma radiation. Regardless, there is something…something _comforting_ about the fact that anything can happen and everything is dangerous and nothing is as it seems. Or about how things are _exactly_ what they seem, even when that should be impossible.

(Clint is willing to admit that comforting is not a word most people would choose.)

Nothing sticks here, that’s Clint’s guiding rule for dealing with Night Vale. This town is…man, it’s like throwing handfuls of spaghetti at the wall, but the spaghetti is always undercooked or overcooked, or maybe this just isn’t the kind of wall that spaghetti sticks to, or maybe the spaghetti isn’t _actually_ spaghetti at all. Point is, the noodles always slide down the wall and end up congealing on the floor where they make a hell of a mess, yeah, but at least they don’t explode and take the wall down with them.

(…Okay, look, Clint isn’t great with metaphors, that’s really more of Phil’s area. Just roll with it, don’t squint too hard, and that’s advice that goes for both convoluted imagery and surviving Night Vale intact.)       

The first time Clint had Night Vale duty he was barely twenty-five, a belligerent, cocky asshole who was only promoted to level four because it was either that or cut him loose and he was too valuable to lose. This was before Phil Coulson became his handler, before Natasha came in from the cold, back when all Clint had was his bow and his job, when some days he still thought everything was going to drop out from under his feet and other days he damn well _wanted_ it to.

He had one mission as a level four agent, where he continued his grand tradition of disobeying stupid ass orders and completing the mission on his own terms, which ended with his handler dramatically declaring to anyone who would listen that he would never work with Clint again. The next day a senior agent he didn’t recognize walked up to him and slapped a thick folder into his hands, saying _pack a bag, Barton, you’re shipping out._

A day later and Clint was blinking up at a desert sun while the agent he was relieving clapped him on the shoulder and said “Welcome to the Hellmouth, enjoy your stay.”

And Clint _did_ , he loved every minute of that three month stint, even when the streets were filled with giant porcupines that shot poisonous quills, even on the day that the town was flooded by a massive wave of molasses, even when he spent a good three days somehow transformed into a squirrel. In a world filled with the surreal and chaotic he felt like he was finally back on solid ground, and when his three months were up and the sand was shaken from his boots he found Phil Coulson waiting for him at headquarters. _Welcome back, Agent Barton,_ Phil had said, _I’ll be your handler from now on._ And then Phil had smiled his most bland smile. _I trust we won’t have any problems._

Years and years later, Clint is back in the shimmering heat of the desert, and it’s like…it’s not like coming home, because Clint and homes aren’t really a _thing_ ; like, the circus was home, he guesses, but it was also a traveling _circus_ and it was a shitty place a lot of the time and its not something he really ever wants to go back to, and SHIELD is home, technically, but in reality it’s a bunk on the Helicarrier and an empty apartment that he rarely sees and he spends more time at Phil’s apartment or in Natasha’s rooms anyway, so yeah. Still, if Clint _did_ do the home thing, he thinks that stepping back into Night Vale would feel kind of like that. Night Vale is color and sound and slime, it’s the lumpy couch in their trailer that dozens of agents have probably shared over the years, it’s the two people he loves most in the world at his back, modified flamethrowers blazing as they cut their way through what can only be described as an army of ents.

(Night Vale is the first place _after_ where he can take a breath and flex his fingers and feel his soul start to wash clean of all the dark, sticky fingerprints Loki left on him.)   


	11. Homestead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this one is pretty much all description and there's not a whole lot of actual Night Vale in it. I just wanted to paint a little picture of what their domestic life is like. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Their trailer is on a patch of land at the edge of town, the desert sprawling out behind them towards Radon Canyon. It’s cramped, but by far not the worst they’ve ever shared. (That award goes to the apartment in Kyrgyzstan. Natasha almost killed them all in Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan was not fun.) This though, this is fine, it just takes a little creativity and good communication. It also helps that privacy has long been an illusion in their line of work and that they’ve been together long enough for it not to matter anyway.

Most of the room in the trailer is dedicated to a command center, stocked with surveillance equipment, survival supplies, and weapons storage, leaving the three of them squashed into whatever is left over. The kitchen is big enough for only one person to really maneuver at a time; two people leads to finagling, elbows in soft places, squabbling, broken dishware, and minor stab wounds, so they generally take turns cooking. Beyond the kitchen is a small round table that serves for dinner, paperwork, weapons assembling, poker nights where the three of them battle for victory, Scrabble nights where Phil and Natasha argue over the validity of Russian words, and Trivial Pursuit nights where Clint proves that his wealth of useless information is good for something.

There is no television; instead, the living room is arranged towards the central point of the radio. There are two low bookshelves pushed against the wall under the window, proverbial graveyards for dime-a-dozen paperbacks left by past agents, with the odd scientific text crammed in amongst the fraying bindings. There is a small lumpy green couch that Clint is inordinately fond of, a plethora of throw pillows, a soft crocheted blanket that Natasha is fairly sure originally came from Old Woman Josie, and a gray armchair that Phil stakes his claim on.

The bedroom is at the far back of the trailer, past the command room, and has beds on either side of a singular window. There are bunk beds on one side and a lower and ever so slightly larger bed on the other. Clint takes the top bunk without question, and if he builds a nest out of pillows and blankets neither Natasha nor Phil comment on it. Natasha claims the bottom bunk, which leaves Phil with the bigger bed. “I want to be able to dump Clint on his ass any time I want,” she says with a grin on their first day, as she is stretching fresh sheets across the mattress. Clint hangs upside down over the edge to glare at her suspiciously, and Phil pretends that he doesn’t know the real reason has to do with the scars still healing on his chest.

From the outside, the trailer doesn’t look like much. The sides are soft brown, and none of them are sure if it was the original color or if that is just the color it has turned after long exposure to sun and dust and the elements. Every inch of it is reinforced, steel-lined and solid enough that it can take a hit, fire-resistant, water-resistant, Night-Vale-in-general resistant. It has held up well, all things considered, and Phil doesn’t squint too hard at the few dents and scratches that it has accumulated. There is a faded blue awning that stretches out across the front, under which they have three chairs and a patio table. Natasha likes to bribe Clint into making lemonade on hot days (which is all of them) and then she curls up in one of the chairs like a cat, lounging in the heat. At the back of the trailer, Phil is cultivating a cactus garden, and there are even odds as to whether it will be an enemy or Clint that falls into it first.  

They have two cars, one a shiny black sedan and the other a shiny black SUV, because what, exactly, is the point of subtlety in Night Vale? Of course, the cars don’t actually _stay_ shiny black for very long, inevitably accumulating a fine layer of dust, dirt, and whatever the disaster of the day leaves behind, whether it be blood, ash, or goo. They also have a cherry red motorcyle that Natasha and Clint fight over but won’t let Phil anywhere near. _You’re a danger to everyone on a motorcycle, sir,_ Clint says, _I was in Madrid, remember?_ And _yes_ , there may have been an incident in Madrid involving a motorcycle, but those were extenuating circumstances and Phil is perfectly capable of driving a motorcycle without causing bodily harm to anyone, including himself. Nevertheless, he finds himself overruled and banned from touching it.

All in all, Phil supposes it is tolerable. Here, Clint would grin and say  _c'mon sir, you know you love it_ and Natasha would raise her eyebrows and say  _Kyrgyzstan, Coulson. Kyrsyzstan,_ and okay,  _fine_ , maybe it's a little more than tolerable. Maybe it's not bad at all. 

He's still not going to miss it when they leave. 

(...Maybe just a little.)

 


	12. Tentacles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, wow, I did not realize that I hadn't updated this since September. I'm sorry, I'm terrible! To make up for it, have four snippets! These are, I believe, the last ones, at least for now. Two out of the four have very little to do with Night Vale, so sorry about that. This one is super short and silly and is yet another installment of Clint-and-Phil-deal-with-weird-shit-and-Phil-hates-his-life.
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone who has commented and left kudos! Your feedback means a lot to me and I'm really grateful for all of you!

“Why do I have tentacles,” Clint says. He sounds confused, staring at the appendages suddenly protruding from his back. Phil is just glad that he isn’t the one asking the _why_ this time around. He pinches the bridge of his nose as a purple tentacle snakes forward and curls gently around his wrist.

“Barton, remove that tentacle from my person if you don’t want me to cut it off.”

The tentacle snaps back as if it has a mind of its own and Clint gives him a wounded look, petting it gently. “I think you scared it.”

“It’s not a dog, it is a tentacle that you did not have five minutes ago, you cannot already be attached.”

“To be fair, sir, it’s actually attached to _me_.”

Phil glares. Clint grins back. Phil pinches the bridge of his nose and disappears into the command center of their trailer. He returns with a packet of papers, slapping them down in front of Clint. “Sit,” he orders. “Form 258. It’s seven pages, so hopefully by the time you’re done they’ll have disappeared on their own or someone will have found a solution.”

Clint sits with a groan, tugging the forms toward him with one of his tentacles. “Why do we even _have_ a form for spontaneously appearing tentacles?” he asks, squinting down at the fine print while he idly twirls a pen.

Phil stares at him flatly. “Why have you spontaneously sprouted said tentatcles?” he asks.

Clint pauses, and then points his pen at Phil. “Touche, sir.”

“Start writing, Barton.”    


	13. Scars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be honest, I'm not really sure what this one is. It's mostly a domestic, kind-of-sort-of character study, where I just wanted to kind of get at how Clint, Phil, and Natasha were at the beginning of their stint in Night Vale vs how they are towards the end. 
> 
> Enjoy!

The scars on Phil’s chest and back are an ugly starburst, pink and raised.

Clint can’t look at them.

They ache sometimes, in the cold and the rain. In the desert, the rain is very rarely a problem, but on some nights when the temperature plummets Phil will wince, his hand starting towards his chest and then stopping, the movement aborted.

Clint avoids his eyes, whenever this happens.

Sometimes, when Phil moves wrong, the wounds pull. It draws him up short in combat, forces him to adjust on the fly, and as smoothly as he moves into a different position it still slows him down, just a hair.

Clint always sees. And he is always there, giving Phil the time he needs to adjust, taking aim and never missing.  

+

Clint has never spent much time in front of a mirror. He’s never put much effort into studying the planes of his face, into judging whether or not his forehead is too big or if his nose is an odd shape. Hasn’t been concerned with the lines settling in at the corners of his eyes and his mouth and on his forehead. He does know what bruises look like when they span across his face, the array of colors they will cycle through from blue to purple to green to yellow until they fade, has marked their colorful progress curiously. He does know where his scars are, the one over his right eyebrow from where he stitched himself up while looking into a dirty mirror in Cairo, the one just under his jaw that never had stitches and probably should have.

These days though, every time Clint passes a mirror he has to check it. He stares into his reflection when he brushes his teeth in the morning. He wipes the condensation from the mirror after his shower, so that he can examine himself while his skin is pink from the heat and his hair is plastered against his forehead. When he glances in the rearview mirror while driving he takes a split second longer to consider himself as well. He walks past a glass window shiny enough to show him his reflection and he will slow, just long enough to check.

Every day, every mirror, Clint checks to make sure that his eyes are the soft blue he knows and not the electric blue that means destruction. Every day, every mirror, Clint holds his breath until his reflection confirms that his mind is his, his eyes are not that vivid, unnatural color, it’s okay, it’s over and Loki is gone and he is in control. It is the first thing that Clint does every morning and it is the last thing he does before he goes to sleep, and when he wakes from the dreams where Loki’s scepter is pressed against his chest he stumbles into the bathroom and stares into the mirror until he can convince himself that what he sees is real.

+

Natasha is growing her hair out. It skims below her shoulders by the time summer hits and she lets it lay soft across her neck, lets it frame her face. When it is hot and she is running surveillance from a sun-beaten car she sometimes pulls it up into a high ponytail that Clint is incapable of not tugging. Some nights when she is fresh and pink from a shower, desert dust and dirt scraped away, she pulls it into a loose braid so that it will fall into soft waves the next morning. If she knows there is going to be trouble she might braid it tight, or pin it up and out of her way.

On days when Clint is twitchy, with a fine tremor in his steady hands, she sometimes presses him down into a chair, sinks to the ground in front of him, fitting a comb and elastics into his hands, and he will work his fingers through her hair, undoing tangles as he finds them. Sometimes he braids her hair, sometimes he twists it into more elaborate styles, his hands always gentle, steadying as he works. She can judge his state of mind by what he creates, if his work is messy or even, if he leaves it in or undoes it all to leave her as a blank canvas.

+

The scars on Phil’s chest are healing, pink fading away, paler and paler. Clint can look at them now.

Clint stops checking every mirror he goes by. If his eyes are too blue, Natasha and Phil will let him know.

In autumn, Natasha’s hair falls past her collarbone. She straightens it most of the time, a soft curtain of red. Some days, when she braids it, Clint huffs at her and plucks the comb out of her hands and does it himself. His braids are tight and even, and he leaves them in. 


	14. A Man Out of Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This snippet very easily could have been an entire story. I played around with the idea of actually letting Steve drag everyone to Desert Bluffs but I ultimately decided against it. This one is definitely one of my favorites that I've done, so I hope you enjoy it!

_Today a man on a motorcycle drove into town. He is a lovely man, with golden hair and a perfect smile. He stopped at the Moonlite All-Night Diner and ordered a coffee, black. He is polite and friendly, and he asked Wendy the Waitress about her day. He listened carefully, smiling and nodding in the right places, asking about her son and her wife and her brother. When she asked him about his loved ones he forced a smile and shook his head. He pretended that the twist of his mouth was because the coffee was bitter. It was not. He is a man out of time, searching the country and finding that nothing is familiar, that time has touched and changed everything—_

“Is it just me,” Clint says slowly, lifting his head to look at the radio, “or does that sound kinda like Steve?”

“Hmm?” Phil says, still looking at a file in front of him. He hasn’t been actively listening, Clint can tell by the slight squint of his eyes.

“Steve? Steve Rogers? Tall, blond, star of your childhood fantasies, Captain America?”

“He did not star in my childhood fantasies,” Phil says absently without looking up, and then pauses. Clint can almost see him mentally rewinding the conversation, and when it clicks Phil glances over at the radio with a contemplative expression. Clint lets him process, pulling out his phone to tap out a text to Natasha. _Listening to the radio?_ he sends.

 _Pulling surveillance,_ he gets back a moment later. “Nat’s on it,” he says aloud.

Phil closes his file, pushing it away. “It could be someone else.”

Clint grins at him. “How many polite blond men out of time do _you_ know?”

Phil gives him an even look in return, which clearly says _do you remember what town we are in_. Clint’s phone buzzes on the table and pulls the message up with a swipe of his finger. _Sighting confirmed,_ it reads, _Cap still at Moonlite_. Clint passes the phone to Phil with a raised eyebrow.

“Of course it’s him,” Phil sighs. “Let’s go. We need to intercept before he ends up glowing or fighting the hooded figures in the dog park.”  

+

Steve is lifting a forkful of pie to his mouth when Phil Coulson, Natasha Romanov, and Clint Barton slide into the other side of his booth. He pauses, considers them, and then puts the pie in his mouth anyway. He chews, he swallows, and he waits.

“Blackberry?” Clint asks. “I expected apple, Cap.”

“Dreadberry,” Steve replies mildly, and Clint squints at the piece of pie.

“Try the blood pumpkin,” Natasha says.

“Natasha,” Phil says reprovingly. “Invisible key lime.”

“Desert root cherry,” Clint says, folding his arms.

“What are you three _doing_ here?” Steve finally asks, before Natasha can pick up a dinner knife and brandish it in defense of her pie choice.

“Assignment,” Clint answers.

Steve’s eyebrows go up and he leans forwards a little, resting his forearms against the edge of the table. “Where?”

Natasha raps her knuckles against the top of the table. “Here.”

“It’s a surveillance mission, Captain Rogers,” Phil says smoothly. “Nothing dangerous.”

Clint and Natasha snort in unison and Phil glares at them. “Agent Coulson,” Steve begins, in the same voice he uses on people who think that being from the 1940s somehow equates to being a complete idiot, “this diner offers blood pie on its menu. The description underneath says blood. That’s it. Just blood,” he says. He lifts his fork and puts it through the flaky crust of his pie. “The crust on this pie is green,” he says, because it is, it is a nice, soft mint green, but he is fairly sure that is not the normal color for pie crust. “I’m not sure what it’s actually made of,” he continues, looking at it with a slight frown.

“They had to alter the crust recipe after wheat and wheat by-products were outlawed,” Clint says, like that is an explanation and not a bundle of further questions.

“Night Vale is…a unique town,” Phil says, choosing his words carefully.

“There is invisible corn on the menu,” Steve replies.

“It’s actually pretty good,” Clint says, grinning, and Natasha shakes her head.

“A _very_ unique town, then,” she amends, and the corners of her mouth twitch.

“It must be,” Steve says neutrally, “if it requires surveillance from three high level SHIELD agents.”

“To be fair,” Clint says, stretching, “we may be here because we landed on Fury’s shit list. It’s all good though, it’s like a vacation.”

“Our ideas of vacation are not the same,” Phil says deadpan and Clint turns mock wounded eyes towards him, trying to pout and not entirely holding a straight face through it.

“How is your roadtrip going, Cap?” Natasha asks, pretending that the blatant subject change isn’t beneath her.

Steve takes another bite of pie and chews slowly, looking guilty. Natasha’s lips curl upwards and Clint whistles. “That bad, huh?”

“There’s been a lot of progress,” Steve says once he swallows. “A lot of good—“

“And a lot of bad,” Clint finishes. He props his elbow on the table. “You’re looking for something familiar but time has touched and changed everything.”

Steve blinks. “I—that wouldn’t necessarily been how I put it, but yeah.”

Clint shrugs. “Cecil is usually pretty spot on with these kinds of things.”

“Cecil?”

“Radio host,” Phil says. “He likes to narrate people’s lives.”

Steve raises his eyebrows. “Is that common nowadays?”

“Only in Night Vale,” Clint says cheerily. “What brought you way out here? Night Vale isn’t exactly easy to get to. Or find. Actually, I’m pretty sure SHIELD has the location classified so it shouldn’t be on any maps or anything like that.”

Phil sighs. “It is classified and the location _is_ suppressed. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t keep popping up on maps despite our best efforts.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Well actually I had no idea it was out here until I was driving through it. I saw a sign for Desert Bluffs so I was on my way there—“

“ _No_ ,” Natasha, Clint, and Phil say in unison. Steve freezes, staring at them.

“You saw a sign for Desert Bluffs?” Phil says, leaning forward. Steve nods slowly. “Where? I need as accurate a location as you can give me, Captain.”

Steve’s back straightens. “Somewhere between twenty and twenty-five miles back down the highway. Near a large rock formation. It said Desert Bluffs, fifty miles.”

Phil nods and then is standing, pulling out a satellite phone. He walks away from the booth, speaking in low, furious tones. Clint watches him go but Natasha focuses her attention back on Steve, who stares evenly back at her. “Care to explain?” he asks.

“Desert Bluffs is not a place for unsuspecting tourists,” Natasha says.

“Desert Bluffs is not a place for _anyone_ ,” Clint interjects. “I can’t believe they got a sign up past us. Fucking Stre—“ he cuts off abruptly with a wince of pain, presumably from the sharp jab of Natasha’s elbow. “Ow, shit, Tasha.”

She gives him a flat look. “You know better,” she says. “Not in public with so many ears around. Steve was being narrated, if you’ll remember.”

Clint rubs his side and sighs. “So it’s possible we’ve entered into the narration, yeah, I know. Hold on.” He reaches into his pocket and comes out with a tiny personal radio, which he flips on with a flick of his thumb. Heavy rhythmic drumming pours out of the speaker, surprisingly loud. “Weather,” Clint says decisively. “We’ve got a couple of minutes at least.”

“Good,” Steve says. “Use them to explain.”

Clint slumps back in his seat. “Okay, Cap. So there are two towns. This is Night Vale,” he says, throwing his arms out. “Night Vale is weird and strange but it’s mostly harmless.”

“In a manner of speaking,” Natasha says. Clint glares at her and she just tilts her head in a _what are you gonna do about it?_ way.

“Fine,” Clint says, chomping the word out, “Night Vale is at least self-contained. Needs to be watched, but any weird shit is unlikely to spill over, and if it does that’s what the agents stationed here—that’d be us right now—are meant to prevent. Desert Bluffs is…well, fuck Desert Bluffs is what it is. They used to be the same way, self-contained, creepy as fuck but still, only recently they’ve been spilling over. Into Night Vale so far, but it’s been a big problem, and if they spill over into the rest of the world we have a serious issue.”

“A removal team is on their way,” Phil says, rejoining them. “ETA ten minutes. They’ll take it out and scout the area to see if any more have been put up. I’ve also ordered a sweep of all the highways from the center all the way back to civilization. They’ll catch anything else like this before it gets too far.”

Steve takes a bite of pie. He chews slowly. Then he puts his fork down. “I want to see this Desert Bluffs.”

Phil Coulson does not panic. He does say, “I cannot recommend that, Captain.”

Steve looks mildly at Phil. Phil looks mildly back. Natasha sighs and says something under her breath in Russian.

Clint says, “aw _fuck_ , I hate Desert Bluffs.”  

The voice on the radio says “ _The man who is not short expresses his distaste for our neighboring city of Desert Bluffs. I cannot fault his frank assessment.”_

“Thanks, Cecil,” Clint says with a grin. Steve looks at the radio. The radio makes sure to narrate this action.

“I thought you were joking,” Steve says. “Is this common in the twenty-first century?” The voice on the radio describes his tone as plaintive. This is not an inaccurate description.

“No,” Natasha answers, because Phil looks like he’s about to try and strangle himself with his own tie. “It’s just here.”

“Ah,” Steve says.

“As pleasant as your company is, Captain Rogers,” Phil says, “I suggest you continue your road trip as soon as possible. And _not_ in the direction of Desert Bluffs.” He pauses.

_The man out of time will not find the answers he seeks here in our quaint little desert town. He is searching for the familiar, for a place that he fits, and Night Vale is not for everyone. The man who is not short finds peace here in the desert, and the man who is not tall feigns dislike—_

Phil stares at the radio. “No,” he says. “There is no feigning. I fucking hate this town.”

Clint grins at him. “You’ve been outed, sir.”

“— _and the red-headed woman tolerates it, as she tolerates everything for the sake of those she calls her own.”_

“You big softy,” Clint says.

“I can kill you with seven objects in our direct vicinity,” Natasha says back.

“Only seven? You’re slacking, Nat.”

_“But the man out of time, no. His answers are elsewhere. He must venture beyond our desert borders, out into the great wide unknown. There exists a peace for each of us, answers to the unspoken questions we have. We are all seeking answers—“_

“Well, this is slightly unsettling,” Steve says, as the voice on the radio continues to speak.

“Hey, can I get some pie?” Clint says, waving down the waitress.

“Welcome to Night Vale,” Natasha says, smiling faintly. “Enjoy your stay.”

“Please do _not_ enjoy your stay, Captain. You have no idea how much paperwork I have to fill out if you get attacked by dinosaurs.”

“Are dinosaurs plausible?” Steve asks, his eyes wide.

“ _Everything_ is plausible,” Clint says. He pauses, considers, and then repeats “ _everything_.”

“…Maybe I’ll just be on my way,” Steve says.

“Excellent idea,” Phil says dryly.

“Finish your pie, Cap,” Natasha says, settling back against the booth. Wendy the waitress slides a piece of blood pumpkin pie down in front of her. Clint is already digging enthusiastically into his desert root cherry, and Phil is trying to remain aloof but he has never been able to pass up pie, even if it is partially invisible.

Steve looks at the three of them, looks at his pie, and then shrugs, picking up his fork. He might as well enjoy it, while it lasts. At least, that’s what the voice on the radio says, and Steve figures that this time, it’s easier to just listen. 


	15. Leaving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright folks, this is it. The (tentative) end. There are still a couple of snippets I might play around with writing, and I'm certainly not opposed to revisiting this universe, but for now this seems like a good place to end it. 
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with me through these, for putting up with how long it takes me to update anything, and for reading these even though most of them are ridiculous. 
> 
> So, for now, good night!

_There are people leaving our town today. The man who is not tall packs duffle bags into a black SUV that glints in the sun. The man who is not short sits on the edge of a roof, a bow curving in his hands. He unstrings it, feels the tension ease, lays it down in a soft-lined black case to sleep until he needs it next. The red-headed woman circles around the edges of their home, checking to see if things they have lost in the sands have returned to them, or if the desert will keep them._

_The man who is not tall closes the trunk of the SUV with a thud and whistles high. The red-headed woman curves her trajectory, bringing her back, and the man who is not short slips surely off the roof, boots hitting the ground with a thud. They take nothing they did not bring; they will leave nothing either. They are going to war, one that rages quietly and unobserved beyond our fair desert town. It is a war they know. They are glad to be back to it, though the man who is not short will glance back over his shoulder as they drive away._

_Tomorrow, there will be a new man who is not tall. There will be a new man who is not short. They will not be the same as the ones who leave us. There will be no red-headed woman; instead they will bring a woman who is neither tall nor short and a man who is not thin. We will not see these people, except in passing, except in peripheral. They will sneak through town but pretend to stroll, they will watch with curious eyes and take notes. They will not leave a mark._

_The man who is not tall starts the SUV. The red-headed woman is in the seat beside him. The man who is not short is in the back, his head leaning against the window. He sighs but makes no sound and the man who is not tall glances at him in the rearview mirror._

_“Good?” the man who is not tall asks. The red-headed woman nods. The man who is not short tilts his head and his mouth curls up but it is not a smile._

_“Good,” he says back. The man who is not tall watches him, then reaches back. Their fingers brush. The man who is not short’s mouth is smiling now. The man who is not tall is not, but the corners of his mouth crinkle. The red-headed woman ignores both of them, but on the inside she is fond, so fond of them._

_The man who is not tall puts the car into gear, eases them out onto a dusty road headed for the highway._

_The man who is not short leans his head back against the window, watching our town shrink, and he smiles as if to himself._

_“Good night, Night Vale,” he says._

_The voice on the radio says it with him._


End file.
